


I Have a Heart of Ice (and it Belongs to You)

by lc2l



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: AU, M/M, Snow and Ice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-14
Updated: 2011-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-17 06:39:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/173981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lc2l/pseuds/lc2l
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam is an ice sculptor. Kris was just an experiment to carve the perfect man, he wasn't supposed to come to life. Prompt by <a href="http://trenchwarfare.dreamwidth.org/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://trenchwarfare.dreamwidth.org/"><b>trenchwarfare</b></a> <a href="http://kradamadness.dreamwidth.org/43100.html?thread=4535132#cmt4535132">here</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	I Have a Heart of Ice (and it Belongs to You)

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/thecooz32/profile)[**thecooz32**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/thecooz32/) for being the most amazing beta ever and for making the shiny awesome banner. ILUFOREVER

Sometimes Kris drips. Those are the bad days because Adam lives in LA—he would move if he could, he's said it more than a thousand times but Kris just laughs and says Adam's clients are here and where else do people buy ice sculptures in bulk anyway?—and the air conditioning only goes up so high because people aren't supposed to sculpt their boyfriends out of ice.

Brad used to complain about Adam's house being like a furnace, now he brings three sweaters when he visits and bitches that the place is 'colder than your fucking studio, Adam, really?'

Some things they work around. Kris doesn't go out during the day, he lives off ice cream and sorbet, he wears the thickest, most insulating clothes that Adam can find (except for those times when his face twists into a 'come get me' smile and he wears nothing at all).

Some things they ignore. The sheen of water on Adam's skin after sex or cuddling or just holding hands. The fact that as soon as Adam falls asleep, Kris slips out from under his arm and goes to the kitchen to open the freezer door and sit with his back pressed against the shelves or goes to the back room to climb into the large cooler and curl up in the dark.

Kris likes physical contact, he likes hugging Adam and kissing Adam and he seems to love fucking Adam. There are consequences to that but they ignore them and they get by.

But sometimes he just drips. The house is as cold as it can get, Adam has to wear a pile of sweaters at all times, but it isn't enough. He drips and there are puddles in doorways and near the sofa and in the spare bedroom where Kris keeps his new guitar.

Adam will never forget the day he walked into his studio to find his side project – his stupid little 'I'm bored' experiment to sculpt the perfect man from ice – sitting on one of the rickety wooden stools and strumming chords on a dark red acoustic.

He looked up when Adam entered and smiled a beautiful smile. Adam hadn't sculpted that. Nor had he sculpted big brown eyes and a plaid shirt. "Hi, I'm Kris."

Adam wasn't entirely sure how one carved 'Southern' but he appeared to have managed it and he was completely okay with that.

The red guitar melted within a week. Adam wasn't even thinking, he just left it in the back room where the air conditioning doesn't reach and when he went back the next morning there was a circular wet patch on the carpet. It looked so real, and Kris looks so real.

Sometimes he catches Kris hiding the mop back in the cupboard and wonders how many puddles are being cleaned up before Adam gets a chance to see. Every time he brings it up Kris laughs and changes the subject. Adam offers to move, offers to sleep in the studio so Kris can stay there, offers to take Kris to fucking Greenland but Kris waves it off as nothing and just keeps dripping and dripping.

Adam used to ferry Kris back and forth to his studio every day, naively thinking that the air conditioning in the car would be enough to keep him safe.

Kris almost lost an arm from the sun shining through the windscreen. Adam had to sculpt it back together, agonisingly slowly, with water and his own freezer still filled with TV dinners and pizza. It was so strange, watching every layer turn the colour of flesh as it dried.

Adam didn't let Kris follow him to bed that night, he left him sitting against the freezer and when he came down in the morning Kris was sleeping, arm curled around a bag of frozen peas like a teddy bear.

They didn't melt against his skin. From then, every morning Adam finds Kris wrapped around the bag.

Adam bought more peas to eat. He bought another guitar—waterproof, this time. He bought another freezer, one Kris can climb into, but it doesn't change the fact that Kris is getting thinner. He keeps cool best he can, but there is essence of Kris on Adam's clothes and Adam's bed and in puddles all over the floor.

Adam is a good sculptor—one of the best—but that doesn't change the fact that ice melts.

(If he had to go back and do his life over he would take up a career in sculpting stone. Magically brought to life stone sculptures wouldn't have to sleep in freezers or leave puddles of water all over the house that remind Adam over and over again that nothing lasts.)

-

There are three things Kris is sure of. Firstly, he isn't like other people. Second, he's dying, quickly. And thirdly, he's head over heels in love with Adam Lambert.

Kris understands love. He doesn't understand heartbeats or blood flow, he doesn't feel pain, but something inside him races when Adam comes near.

He touches his fingers to his arm where Adam has so painstakingly rebuilt the section that melted into his lap while he was too busy looking at palm trees and listening to Adam sing along with the radio.

("You should be a singer," Kris had said. Adam just laughed. "If I was a singer, how would I have made you?")

Kris wishes he was in bed with Adam. He knows it would be foolish, knows his arm is still weak (his whole body is weak but they don't talk about that because it makes Adam sad and Kris never wants Adam to be sad). He just wants to feel Adam's arms around him, wants the reassurance of love.

His arm melted, and there was nothing inside. No bones or veins or muscle, just ice.

He takes a bag of peas from the freezer and presses it to his chest so that his heart—if he has one—is being frozen from both sides.

But why would he have a heart?

To love?

All the stories say he needs a heart to love. Maybe Adam has his heart, sculpted from ice and kept in the freezer in his studio full of statues that have never so much as blinked.

Kris doesn't know why he can move and they can't, but he isn't sure which of them have the better deal. Sometimes—sitting on the floor in the kitchen without Adam's arms around him—he thinks maybe it would be better if he'd never woken up.

Adam never cries when the still ones melt, his tears mixing with the puddles on the floor.

But they never get to feel the warmth of his arms around them.

And they don't fall in love with what's killing them.

-

"I don't want to live as a block," Kris said once, out of the blue. "I don't want to melt down to a block and you to keep me in your freezer because you don't want to let me go. I don't want to keep going with no way to hold you or kiss you or tell you I love you."

Adam held him tighter, ignoring the water soaking into his sleeves. "What are you saying?"

Kris buried his face against Adam's neck. "I'm saying at some point we're going to go past the point of no return, and I want you to let me see it through to the end." Then he moved back, smiled his dazzling smile and leant in to lick the water off Adam's neck.

And it was easy enough to forget, at the time. Easy enough to ignore the important things.

Kris said once, at the beginning when everything was new and amazing, back when puddles were something to leap in when it rained, that he wanted to see the sunrise. Adam was still trying to explain the whole world and getting large sections wrong, but the enthusiastic hand gestures conveyed everything that needed saying (and everything that needed saying was 'You're amazing, kiss me') and Kris found a postcard with a sunrise over the sea and held it out. "One day," he said. "I will sit out and watch the sunrise."

At the time it was a joke. One day when you don't keep me up so late I sleep until noon. One day when I can be bothered to put seeing the outside world before waking up with you. One day when the world is perfect.

Now Adam lifts the lid of Kris's freezer in the morning and sees his smaller-by-the-day boyfriend curled up around a packet of frozen peas with the postcard in one hand.

Now Adam realizes that that is how it's going to end.

They haven't woken up together in a long time.

There are some things they work around. Kris eats ice cream and gets smaller with every puddle and every set of damp sheets. His lips get smoother with every kiss.

There are some things they ignore, because it's easier to imagine that nothing will ever change.

But sometimes Kris drips.


End file.
